The Rand Corporation has just released a new study concluding that the Los Angeles City Council’s ban on new restaurants in South LA will not reduce obesity rates in that poor area of the city. From the LA Times coverage:

Though the authors noted that obesity takes a “disproportionate toll on minority populations, especially among African American and Hispanic youth” who live in South Los Angeles, limiting the type of restaurants that move to the area isn’t likely to solve the problem.
Policy choices such as forcing restaurants to print calorie and nutrition information on their menus and reducing the availability of snack food and sodas is likely to be more effective in combating obesity than restricting the areas where fast-food establishments can open, Strum said.

As you can see, the Rand folks are hardly boiling with the appropriate outrage against politicians encroaching on the fundamental liberties of the people. Part of the dynamic, apparently, is that Rand is questioning prior computer-assisted reporting by the Times alleging a disproportionate concentration of fast-food restaurants in South LA.

So the commissars and their enablers are bickering. The winners get to tell local residents what to eat, where to dine, and whether they can open a new business. Great. In the meantime, won’t someone please sue these thugs?